Monthly Archives: March 2020

This morning, the 26th March, I received an email from a journal for which I had agreed to referee a paper.

I should add that this is one of those journals that asks you to return your review within ONE week and if you accept and click on their little calendar you find that the longest you can delay the return date is to a generous (!) ten days. As an Editor myself, and knowing how difficult it is to get referees at the best of times, I, against my better judgement, agreed to review the paper, but did say in my return email, that three weeks was a better time frame. I was thus somewhat surprised, a mere three days after accepting the invitation, to get this email from the Editorial Office.

You will note that they totally ignored my request for extra time

If you were an old softie like me, always willing to see the best in everyone, you might call this passive-aggressive behaviour, but really, I think you can construe this as bullying, especially, if, unlike me, you are new to the reviewing game. I was very tempted to reply saying that I had changed my mind and wasn’t going to review the paper after all. I had, however, read the paper and made my preliminary notes, so despite my anger, they will get a review from me this time, but I have vowed to turn down all future invitations from this particular journal.

Given that Steve Heard thinks that the fastest review time an author should expect is seven, yes SEVEN weeks, then, by golly, asking a reviewer to do it in one week is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Yes, we don’t want to return to those days in the 1980s, when I once waited 18 months for a decision from the Journal of Applied Ecology, but there are limits, and one week, is as far as I am concerned, taking the mickey. I know from personal experience, that as journal Editors we are under pressure, (unduly so I think), from our publishers to improve our turnaround time, for example, the four journal with which I am involved, ask reviewers to return their reports within three weeks, but I am always happy to extend this if asked*, but I will say this again, one week is just not on!

Finally, as an Editor, can I just add two pleas; first, if asked by a journal to review a paper, please reply promptly, even if it is to say no; second, if you do agree to review a paper, please either return by the stipulated date, or ask for an extension. We will, and I am sure I speak for the majority of Editors, be happy to oblige.

Like this:

Advance warning – there is not much science or entomology in this one, although it could be a welcome respite from Covid-19 😊

I am assured that they are gazing at their navels

A couple of days ago I was scrolling through my ‘Blogs to write’ file, clicking on titles that caught my fancy, when I came across this one that I thought looked interesting – Meaningful numbers, with a file date of almost exactly 4 years ago.

What surprises lurk inside this file?

I wondered what I was thinking about at the time so opened the file. Imagine my disappointment when this was revealed 😊

Nothing but the title, not even a picture to help jog my memory!

So, I was none the wiser. I knew it wasn’t about one of my pet bugbears; journals that use numbered references, because that has its own file, in fact two files, because I seem to have started writing it twice 😊 I guess an indication of how much the practice irritates me. As a referee it makes it so much more difficult to check if the authors have cited the relevant literature. 😦

I hate this so much! It goes against my sense of order, literally speaking of course 😊

It wasn’t about how many times the word insect featured as a worldwide search term in Google Trends, although looking at the graph it is striking that the peak is in June/July, the Northern Hemisphere summer.

Worldwide Google Trends for the search term ‘insect’

Staying with insects, (OK there is some tangential entomology in this piece), could I have been meaning to write something about how many insects species there are, given that the estimates range from Terry Erwin’s gloriously possibly over the top estimate of 30 000 000 (Erwin, 1983) to Ian Hodkinson’s 2-3 000 000, that I consider to be very conservative indeed, with Camilo Mora and colleagues oddly calculated 9 000 000 in between. Or, could it refer to my ten-year data aphid data sets from Scotland, still waiting to be transferred transfer from these battered notebooks to an Excel spreadsheet?

Aphid data, not meaningful until it makes it to a spreadsheet?

Certainly, they contain a lot of numbers but are they meaningful? They haven’t even made it into my Data I am never going to publish series 😊

In desperation I Googled the phrase ‘meaningful numbers’ and ended up, via this piece by Donald Byrd,

on the Wikipedia page about significant figures, which, although the habit that many undergraduates have of reporting their statistical output to the millionth decimal place, is one of my other pet bugbears, was probably not what I had intended to write about, or was it?

I guess we’ll never know what the original title was all about, but on the plus side, I now have a few more ideas to turn into blogs 😊

My review of Nick Haddad’s excellent book was published recently in Oryx. If you want to read the review, follow this link. If you don’t, then all you need to know is that my responses to the following questions were all very positive 🙂

A highlight of the academic year for me is our annual trip to the Royal Entomological Society HQ in St Albans with the MSc Entomology course. We had a very early start but everyone turned up in time and in a very cheerful mood, in perfect keeping with our coach 😊

Happy Days – a visit to Royal Entomological Society HQ. This year we arrived in good time as the traffic was, for a change, relatively light.

The traditional group photograph in front of the giant ant.

Another tradition – selfie in the famous entomological lift; I forgot to hold my gut in 🙂

MSc Entomology students waiting for the first talk. All very much awake as we were greeted by coffee and biscuits

The RES Library is a fantastic resource, with a huge collection of antiquarian and modern literature.

Not aphids, but still beautiful

Beautiful, but a bit macabre?

Ancient and modern, but the problem is still with us.

We let them go outside too 😊 They are rescuing a bumblebee and working up an appetite for lunch.

Lunch in the Council room, I don’t know what the Aurelians thought about it

but here they are at the back of the room keeping an eye on things 🙂

I would so love to own a copy of this – The text reads “This very interesting, but I must remember that I came here to collect specimens of Lepidoptera”

Many thanks to all of the staff at the Royal Entomological Society for their very generous hospitality. if you wan to learn more about what the Royal Entomological Society has to offer or to become a Member or Fellow then follow this link

For many entomologists The Rembrandt Hotel in South Kensington and the first Wednesday of March means only one thing – the Verrall Supper. I report on the activities of the Verrall Association annually and if you click on this link you will be able to work your way back through previous reports to my very first attempt. This will, once again, be largely a photographic record. This year the first Wednesday of March was the 4th but despite the date of the Supper always being the first Wednesday in March it still seemed to have caught a few Verrallers by surprise. In addition the dreaded Covid-19 (Coronavirus), understandably, made some of our older members wasr of travelling to the capital. Consequently, numbers were slightly down compared with last year’s, although the number of non-attending Verrallers paying to retain their membership was at an all-time high. One notable absence, due to the concerns of his wife, was our former Treasurer, Verrall Supper Secretary and oldest member of the Entomological Club, was Van (Professor Helmut van Emden). His presence was sorely missed. As far as I know he has only missed the Verrall Super twice.

We seem to have stalled a bit on my mission to increase the proportion of female entomologists; is year, we were 36 % the same as last year. There is still much progress to be made, but we have seen a year on year increase now for the last four years so, perhaps one day we will hit that magic 50:50 mark.

Like last year, I performed a humanist blessing, which seemed to meet with satisfaction from all sides, I reproduce it here if anyone feels like using it at a similar occasion.

As we come together at this special time, let us pause a moment to appreciate the opportunity for good company and to thank all those past and present whose efforts have made this event possible. As we go through life, the most important thing that we can collect is good memories. Thank you for all being here today to share this meal as a treasured part of this collection.

This was then followed by a religious grace by Chris Lyal. Never let it be said that the Verrall Association is not inclusive 🙂

And now as the old cliché goes, let the pictures tell the story.

Welcome to the Verrall Supper – Simon Leather and Clive Farrell ready and waiting for the first guests to sign in. Note the precariously placed pint which a few minutes later tipped over and flooded the sign-in sheets 🙂

Three stalwarts of the Entomological Club, Paul Brakefield, Chris Lyal and Clive Farrell.

Some of the former Harper Adams entomologists, with former and current teaching staff, Ben Clunie, Scott Dwyer, Christina Conroy, Sue Stickells, Mike Copland, Ruth Carter and Simon Leather.

The younger end of the Verrall Supper, many of whom I have taught including one form the first Harper Adams cohort, Ashleigh Whiffin, now a Curator at the Scottish National Museum and Katy Dainton form cohort two, now a research entomologist at the Forestry Commission Northern Research Station at Roslin.

A diverse range of ages and career stages with plenty of wine to moisten teh vocal chords 🙂

Varying degrees of sartorial elegance were very much in evidence, including some ‘gentlemen’ without ties. A good job Van wasn’t there 🙂

Can you spot the Knight of the Realm on the far left and on the far right on another table, the father of one of our more notorious politicians?

Did you know that Orlando Bloom’s mother is a Verraller? (in case you were wondering she is the foreground on the left with beret talking to Claudia Watts). One the right we have Mike Hassell, Austin Burt and Richard Lane, probably talking about malaria 🙂

Richard Hopkins in charge of the NRI table. NRI definitely helped with the sex ratio and good to see that there are so many female entomologists keen to enter the profession.

As so far, I have only received positive emails about the evening, I think I am justified in assuming that most, if not all, had a good time. It was great to have seen you all and I hope to see even more of you next year, when we meet again on March 3rd 2021.

Static electric fields are common throughout the environment and this has been known for some time (e.g Lund (1929) and back in 1918, the great Jean-Henri Fabre, writing about the dung beetle, Geotrupes stated “They seem to be influenced above all by the electric tension of the atmosphere. On hot and sultry evenings, when a storm is brewing, I see them moving about even more than usual. The morrow is always marked by violent claps of thunder”

Given this, it is surprising that it was not until the 1960s that entomologists started to take a real interest in electroperception, when a Canadian entomologist decided to investigate the phenomenon further, but using flies (Edwards, 1960). He found that if Drosophila melanogaster and Calliphora vicina exposed to, but not in contact with, an electrical field, they stopped moving. Calliphora vicina needed a stronger voltage to elicit a response than D. melanogaster, which perhaps could be related to their relative sizes. It seemed that their movement was reduced when electrical charge applied and changed, but not if the field was constant.

Responses of two fly species to electrical fields (From Edwards, 1960)

In a follow up experiment with the the Geometrid moth Nepytia phantasmaria he showed that females were less likely to lay eggs when exposed to electrical fields (Edwards, 1961), but the replication was very low and the conditions under which the experiment was run were not very realistic.

In the same year, Maw (1961) working on the Ichneumonid wasp, Itoplectis conquisitor, which is attracted to light, put ten females into a chamber with a light at one end but with parts of the floor charged at different levels. The poor wasps were strongly attracted to the light but the electrical ‘barrier’ slowed them down; the stronger the charge, the greater the reluctance to enter the field.

On the other hand, some years later, working with the housefly, Musca domestica and the cabbage looper, Trichoplusia ni, across a range of different strength electrical fields, Perumpral et al., (1978) found no consistent avoidance patterns in where the houseflies preferred to settle, but did find that wing beat frequency of male looper moths was significantly affected, although inconsistently. Female moths on the other hand were not significantly affected. This put paid to their intention to develop a non-chemical control method for these two pests.

A more promising results was obtained using the cockroach Periplaneta americana. Christopher Jackson and colleagues at Southampton University showed that the cockroaches turned away, or were repulsed, when they encountered an electric field and if continuously exposed to one, walked more slowly, turned more often and covered less distance (Jackson et al., 2011). As an aside, this is similar to the effects one of my PhD students found when she exposed carabid beetles exposed to sub-lethal applications of the insecticide dimethoate*.

Other insect orders have also been shown to respond to electric fields. Ants, in particular the fire ant, Solenopsis invicta, are apparently a well-known hazard to electrical fittings (MacKay et al., 1992), and a number of species have been found in telephone receivers (Eagleson, 1940), light fittings and switches (Little, 1984), and even televisions (Jolivet, 1986), causing short circuits and presumably, coming to untimely ends 🙂

Rosanna Wijenberg and colleagues at Simon Fraser University in Canada, really went to town and tested the responses of a variety of different insect pests to electric fields. They found that the common earwig, Forficula auricularia, two cockroaches, Blatta germanica, Supella longipalpa, two Thysanurans, the silverfish, Lepisma saccharina and the firebrat Thermobia domestica were attracted to, or at least arrested by electrified coils. Periplaneta americana, on the other hand, was repulsed (Wijenberg et al., 2013). They suggested that using electrified coils as non-toxic baits might be an environmentally friendly method of domestic pest control. I have, however, not been able to find any commercial applications of this idea although perhaps you know better?

Although a number of marine vertebrates generate electricity and electric fields as well as perceiving and communicate using them, there was, until fairly recently, no evidence of electrocommunication within the insect world (Bullock, 1999); after all, they have pheromones 😊

When we look at the interaction between insects and electromagnetic fields there is growing evidence that bees, or at least honey bees, like some birds (Mouritsen et al., 2016) have the wherewithal and ability to navigate using magnetic fields (Lambinet et al., 2017ab). Interestingly**, honeybees, Apis mellifera have been shown to generate their own electrical fields during their waggle dances which their conspecifics are able to detect (Greggers et al., 2013). Bumble bees (Bombus terrestris), have also been shown to be able to detect electrical fields. In this case, those surrounding individual plants. The bees use the presence or absence of an electrical charge to ‘decide’ whether to visit flowers or not. If charged they are worth visiting, the charge being built up by visitation rates of other pollinating insects (Clarke et al., 2013)

Since I’m on bees, I can’t leave this topic without mentioning mobile phones and electromagnetic radiation, although it really deserves an article of its own. The almost ubiquitous presence of mobile phones has for a long time raised concern about the effect that their prolonged use and consequent exposure of their users to electromagnetic radiation in terms of cancer and other health issues (Simkó & Mattson, 2019). Although there is growing evidence that some forms of human cancer can be linked to their use (e.g. Mialon & Nesson, 2020), the overall picture is far from clear (Kim et al., 2016). Given the ways in which bees navigate and the concerns about honeybee populations it is not surprising that some people suggested that electromagnetic radiation as well as neonicitinoids might be responsible for the various ills affecting commercial bee hives (Sharma & Kumar, 2010, Favre, 2011). The evidence is far from convincing (Carreck, 2014) although a study from Greece looking at the intensity of electromagnetic radiation from mobile phone base stations on the abundance of pollinators found that the abundance of beetles, wasps and most hoverflies decreased with proximity to the base stations, but conversely, the abundance of bee-flies and underground nesting wild bees increased, while butterflies were unaffected (Lázaro et al., 2016). A more recent study has shown that exposure to mobile phones resulted in increased pupal mortality in honeybee queens but did not affect their mating success (Odemer & Odemer, 2019). All in all, the general consensus is that although laboratory studies show that electromagnetic radiation can affect insect behaviour and reproduction the picture remains unclear and that there are few, if any field-based studies that provide reliable evidence one way or the other (Vanbergen et al., 2019). Much more research is needed before we can truly quantify the likely impacts of electromagnetic radiation on pollinators and insects in general.

Acknowledgements

I must confess that I had never really thought about insect electroperception until I was at a conference and came across a poster on the subject by Matthew Wheelwright, then an MRes student at the University of Bristol, so it is only fair to dedicate this to him.

I write about politics, nature + the environment. Some posts are serious, some not. These are my views, I don't do any promotional stuff and these views are not being expressed for anyone who employs me.

Welcome to the lounge, where entomologists and insect enthusiasts can relax, grab a cup and put on a nice music. Step out of your day job, and step into your zone, where you reconnect with your passion for insects and enrich yourself with more knowledge.